Bill Morrison

Alan is a musician who leaves a busted-up band for New York, and a new musical voyage. He tries to stay focused and fends off all manner of distractions, including the attraction to his good friend's girlfriend.

With darker, Bill Morrison takes inspiration from David Lang’s restrained and highly detailed score to create what he describes as a slowly lilting depiction of the sublime, in which actors, dancers, and acrobats reappear and disappear back into a bubbling morass of time. Morrison’s films often incorporate imagery from decomposing nitrate films, creating a haunting photochemical effect.

A short film made during lockdown.

The 1st Volume of Characters in Motion introduces a new wealth of cutting edge character visuals to the established world of animation. The DVD compiles over 90 stylistically outstanding films by 60 international studios, artists and designers in curated programs such as Characters in Narration, Characters in Rhythm and Characters in Motion. Additionally, a special selection menu allows to sort the 180+ minutes of animation by creator, character or style.

A meditation on the human quest to transcend physicality, constructed from decaying archival footage and set to an original symphonic score.

A city symphony inspired by New York

Chicago, 2018. A man is killed by police on the street. Through a composite montage of images from surveillance and security footage as well as police body-cams, Incident recreates the event and its consequences, featuring vain justifications, altercations and attempts to avoid blame. Bill Morrison delivers a chilling political investigation in search of the truth.

In 1899, a photographer at American Mutoscope & Biograph mounted his camera on the front of a trolley traveling over the Brooklyn Bridge. The three 90-foot rolls he created were edited together to complete the journey from Manhattan to Brooklyn, entitled Across the Brooklyn Bridge. As a commission by the Museum of Modern Art for the re-opening of their facility, American avant-garde filmmaker Bill Morrison took this remarkable footage and recombined it with itself to form a new split-screen extrapolation.

A collection of films from an eclectic array of contributors commissioned to raise funds for the Bristol independent cinema The Cube.

The true history of a collection of some 500 films dating from 1910s to 1920s, which were lost for over 50 years until being discovered buried in a sub-arctic swimming pool deep in the Yukon Territory, in Dawson City, located about 350 miles south of the Arctic Circle.

Based on the story of Howard Walls, A clerk at the Library of Congress who saved a collection of early paper reel films from the incinerator, director Bill Morrison embellishes the tale a bit in this inspired short work. Here, the vision of a woman in an early porno film has been engrained in the mind of a man working at the Library of Congress and his search for the film of her has an unexpected consequence, as he saves a collection of historically significant films from being destroyed.

Atlantic Ocean, off the coast of Iceland, July 9, 2016. The surprising discovery of a canister —containing four reels of The Village Detective (Деревенский детектив), a 1969 Soviet film—, caught in the nets of an Icelandic trawler, is the first step in a fascinating journey through the artistic life of film and stage actor Mikhail Ivanovich Zharov (1899-1981), icon and star of an entire era of Russian cinema.

Drawing from a passage from the Rosh Hashana Service, “Who shall live, who shall die… who by water, who by fire,” this short film deals with that which has been preordained—a future history that will in time unfold before us as the faces of passengers on a ship forces us to contemplate our own fate.

Bill Morrison’s experimental short features decayed film reels from the lost, German silent film Pawns of Passion (1928).

Made by re-editing a deteriorated nitrate print of The Bells (1926), starring Lionel Barrymore and Boris Karloff, this work shows the fragility of the film image while foreshadowing the Holocaust.

The Mississippi River Flood of 1927 was the most destructive river flood in American history. In the spring of 1927, the river broke out of its banks in 145 places and inundated 27,000 square miles to a depth of up to 30 feet. Part of it enduring legacy was the mass exodus of displaced sharecroppers. Musically, the Great Migration of rural southern blacks to Northern cities saw the Delta Blues electrified and reinterpreted as the Chicago Blues, Rhythm and Blues, and Rock and Roll. Using minimal text and no spoken dialog, filmmaker Bill Morrison and composer - guitarist Bill Frisell have created a powerful portrait of a seminal moment in American history through a collection of silent images matched to a searing original soundtrack.

This documentary focuses on the artistry of director Bill Morrison, who leverages decaying film stock from years past to tell new stories that are relevant to today's audiences. The decaying film lends brilliant visuals which add to Morrison's concept of storytelling.

A response in music and film to the conflict that launched a century of war, and a celebration of the power of art to keep us sane and offer us comfort. Beyond Zero: 1914-1918 brings together three of the world's most pioneering artists: the Kronos Quartet, known for decades for their trailblazing performances and collaborations; acclaimed Serbian composer Aleksandra Vrebalov; and filmmaker Bill Morrison, respected for his work with rare and even partially destroyed archive images.

Walter Francis and Jerry Peoples, two characters from "Mutual Appreciation", share a visit at the Peoples' home in the countryside.

Hauntingly beautiful preparation for the fashion show followed by the show itself.

A woman attends a party where she is observed by and finally meets a mysterious guest.

A series of conversations and monologues captured in the kitchen of the famous Vanguard jazz club in New York’s Greenwich Village in 1994- 95 by the director, who was working at the club at the time as a dishwasher.

'Just Ancient Loops' employs high resolution scans of ancient nitrate footage, as well as newly created CGI renderings of space to depict different views of heaven.

Originally planned as part of Michael Kanieckis play, «Howard Hughes: The World Is Round», the film follows the internal monologue of billionaire Hughes as he navigates between Earth and The Screening Room. James Godwin is featured in the voice-over. The performance was presented at The Kitchen, NYC, March 1994.